‘Emotional’ Lewandowski backed to rebound from his penalty miss

An “emotional” Robert Lewandowski has to digest his penalty miss against Mexico and be Poland’s spearhead for the rest of the World Cup in Qatar, according to his coach Czeslaw Michniewicz.

The Barcelona star looked poised to score his first-ever goal at a World Cup finals and his 77th in a Poland shirt when he won a penalty early in the second half and stepped up to take it himself.

However, Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa showed all the experience of his 37 years and five World Cups to guess the right way and save low to his left, sparking delirium among the largely Mexican crowd and ensuring a disappointing game ended goalless.

But Michniewicz has called upon Lewandowski to dig deep and recover from his disappointment.

“I sympathised with him, I know how a captain who misses a penalty feels,” he said. “He was very emotional about it.

“We have a monitor in the dressing room, he watched a few replays of it. He has to digest it himself, he knows how he will deal with the situation. We know he will help us a lot in this tournament.”

Meanwhile, El Tri coach Gerardo Martino said: “We never let (Poland) run at us, they’re always dangerous when they run.

“Maybe we had our best chances in the first half, we became predictable, we were too cautious. We had to gamble with the ball. It’s true in the first half the intensity was there.”